Help Your Dog Cope with Stress

While we all understad how important it is to effectively manage our stress, we often fail to realize how important it is to help our dogs do the same.

So what stress sources from our lives significantly impact our dogs? Here are a few examples:

• Interpersonal Stress
• Behavior Problems in Children
• Significant Loss (especially of a master)
• Moves
• Kids Goin Back to School
• Loss of Home

While these are all naturally occurring in our lives, their collective impact can be very negative for both us as well as our dogs.

Knowing When Your Dog is Stressed

There are several signs your dog may be suffering from heightened stress. While many of these signs are also connected to other problems, these are things you may see with your dog when there is stress in the home environment. Here are a few of these signs to watch for:

• Excessively Chewing on Himself - while most animals will chew a little as a form of cleaning, excessive chewing is indicative of high stress.
• Destructive Behavior - While some animals are naturally inclined to some desctructive behavior, this would be in excess of what's normal for your companion pet.
• Separation anxiety
• Lack of appetite & refusal to open mouth
• Improper bowel movements & vomiting
• Unusually passive behavior including keeping tail between the legs or avoiading eye contact.

Remember, these are indicators but are also common in some dogs normally. If you see an increase in these behaviors, that's when to start evaluating whether or not there are new additional stress factors in the environment that may need to be dealt with.

Physiological Effects

Just like humans, exposure to a highly stressful environments and situations can take a physiological toll on your dog. These can include:

• Ulcers
• Stress related diarrhea
• Stomach Upset
• Skin irritation

Helping Fido through Stressful Times

While we may just have to muscle through stress, we can often help our pets so they remain happy and healthy. Here are some tips on how:

Spend quality "happy" time with your dog. - Dogs have the ability to help us feel better when we're down due to their physical empathy. While this may make us feel better, it often significantly increases their stress level. Just like you might fake happiness with a toddler, do the same thing with your dog to help reduce their stress.

Consider boarding your dog. While in the process of changing your pet's environment, consider boarding them for a short time. Dogs are great at adapting to new environments, but they aren't great at dealing with change. Boarding your dog while making physical changes to their environment will cause less stress than watching the changes happen.

Being around other animals will help decrease stress. Make use of a dog park or a doggie daycare several times a week to help ensure your pet is getting enough socialization.

We all want what's best for out families, including out pets. Don't forget to consider the stress your dog feels when things aren't normal at home and help give them the attention needed to successfully cope will it too.